Default-all is Dangerous!
by Wolfgang Gatterbauer, Alexandra Meliou, Dan Suciu
Abstract:
We show that the default-all propagation scheme for database annotations is dangerous. Dangerous here means that it can propagate annotations to the query output which are semantically irrelevant to the query the user asked. This is the result of considering all relationally equivalent queries and returning the union of their where-provenance in an attempt to define a propagation scheme that is insensitive to query rewriting. We propose an alternative query-rewrite-insensitive (QRI) where-provenance called minimal propagation. It is analogous to the minimal witness basis for why-provenance, straight-forward to evaluate, and returns all relevant and only relevant annotations.
Citation:
Wolfgang Gatterbauer, Alexandra Meliou, and Dan Suciu, Default-all is Dangerous!, in 3rd USENIX Workshop on the Theory and Practice of Provenance (TaPP), 2011.
Bibtex:
@inproceedings{tapp2011b,
    Abstract = {We show that the default-all propagation scheme for database
    annotations is dangerous. Dangerous here means that it can propagate
    annotations to the query output which are semantically irrelevant to the
    query the user asked. This is the result of considering all relationally
    equivalent queries and returning the union of their where-provenance in an
    attempt to define a propagation scheme that is insensitive to query
    rewriting. We propose an alternative query-rewrite-insensitive (QRI)
    where-provenance called minimal propagation. It is analogous to the
    minimal witness basis for why-provenance, straight-forward to evaluate,
    and returns all relevant and only relevant annotations.},
    Author = {Gatterbauer, Wolfgang and Meliou, Alexandra and Suciu, Dan},
    Booktitle = {3rd {USENIX} Workshop on the Theory and Practice of Provenance (TaPP)},
    Title = {\href{http://arxiv.org/pdf/1105.4395}{Default-all is Dangerous!}},
    Venue = {TaPP},
    address = {Heraklion, Greece},
    month = jun,
    Year = {2011}}